convinced that at least two-thirds of them owe their entire plausibility to their identification of that particular form of inspiration which is usually designated as verbal or mechanical, with a divine Revelation. To this theory they believe Christianity to be pledged, and consequently that every objection which can be urged against the Old Testament on the ground that its statements or its language are not scientifically correct; or that its moral teaching is imperfect; or that it attributes to God the passions of humanity; or against the New Testament, on the ground that discrepancies exist in the Gospels which are difficult to reconcilein a word, that everything in the Bible which is at variance with mechanical verbal accuracy is fatal to its claim to be considered a revelation from God.

Nor are these opinions confined to the classes in question, but with various modifications there is also among educated men a wide-spread belief that Christianity must answer with its life for our inability to reconcile every statement in Scripture with the discoveries of modern science; and not only so, but with the popularly accepted views of what Scripture affirms. The same thing is true with respect to its historical statements, even to the extent of maintaining the accuracy of the commonly accepted system of Chronology, and a vast number of other points which it is needless here to particularize. The same principle has been applied to the New Testament, and it is hardly too much to affirm that no inconsiderable number of the objections which are popularly urged against the truth of the Gospel narrative generally, are founded on the assumption that every part of it must belong to that class of writings which rigidly follow the sequences of time and place; and that any deviation from this is fatal to its historical character. All this has been quietly assumed in the face of the fact that two of the Gospels affirm in definite language that they are not histories in the strict sense of that term, but memoirs, compiled for the purpose of teaching a religion; and the other two, if they do not assert this in express words, plainly imply it.

On similar principles the demand is frequently made to defend the entire morality of the Old Testament, or to renounce our Christianity, as though it were inconceivable that God's revelations can have been of a progressive character. In fact, turn where we will, we are confronted with similar objections, most of which owe their validity to the assumption that the truth of Christianity is dependent on our ability to show that all its facts and phenomena are consistent with the theory that the divine assistance imparted to the writers of the sacred books must have been of such a character as to guard them from the possibility of error on all subjects alike, whether religious, philosophical, scientific, or historical; and that to concede the possibility of error on any one of these points, is to surrender the claims of Christianity to be accepted as a Revelation from God. From this has resulted, not only an extensive diffusion of actual unbelief, but (what is worthy of our deepest attention) that a large number of religious men have been greatly shaken and disquieted in their faith.

This evil has been intensified by several of the efforts that have been made to counteract it. Many zealous but injudicious defenders of Christianity have propounded solutions of these difficulties of so inadequate a character, that they can be accepted by none but those who are pledged to the maintenance of a particular hypothesis.* The effect of

* I adduce one of a very extreme character from a recently pub. lished work, as an illustration of the danger of such methods. Common sense for eighteen centuries has read the account of the Crucifixion as affirming that Our Lord was crucified between two robbers. A recent writer, whom it will be unnecessary to name, has made the notable discovery that He was crucified between four. St. Luke designates the persons crucified with Him as malefactors (kakovρyo); the other Evangelists call them robbers (Anorai). This writer therefore thinks it necessary to maintain that a kakоupуos and a Anorns were crucified on each side of Him. This is, I own, a very exaggerated instance, but it will serve my purpose of illustrating the mischief which has resulted from propounding inadequate solutions of difficulties, for the purpose of bolstering up a favourite theory. Unhappily such forced explana

solutions of this kind has been to create a great deal more unbelief than they have removed, producing as they do the impression on unbiassed minds that the defenders of Christianity are reduced to the utmost straits by the objections which have been urged.

I am deeply sensible of the responsibility attending any attempt to handle this question. I feel however that its importance is so great in reference to the present aspects both of scientific and popular thought, that to pass it over in silence would be an evasion of a plain duty. I by no means wish to affirm that all the difficulties which are agitating men's minds at the present day have originated in the supposed necessity of maintaining a particular theory of inspiration. Many of them are closely connected with. questions of Theism, and in the higher regions of thought we are undoubtedly approaching a great crisis between the principles of Atheism and Pantheism on the one side, and those of Theism on the other. Yet it cannot be denied that no small number of them have arisen from the cause I have mentioned, and from that which is closely allied to it, the

tions have not been adopted only by persons who have to maintain a particular theory of Inspiration. We have a remarkable instance of one in Paley, who was quite free from prejudices of this description, in his attempt to solve the difficulty about Cyrenius and the taxing. No scholar at the present day will for a moment accept his translation οἱ αὕτη ἡ ἀπογραφὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου, "This was the first assessment (or enrolment) of Cyrenius, Governor of Syria;" the words " Governor of Syria" being used after the name of Cyrenius as an addition or title, just in the same manner as an inaccurate modern writer might have said that a particular act was done by "Governor Hastings," although in truth it had been done by him before he was advanced to the station from which he received the name of "Governor." The simple fact is that the words yeμovεvoVTOS τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου never could have borne the meaning which Paley has here ascribed to them. Whether St. Luke was right or wrong in his statement as to the fact, there is only one possible interpretation of his words, namely, "while Cyrenius was Governor of Syria." Such forced explanations are far more dangerous than a candid admission of a difficulty.

desire of maintaining the traditionary interpretations of certain passages in the Bible as the only admissible ones. This is unquestionably the case with many of the difficulties which have been suggested by modern science, of which no small number would disappear if the popular theories on this subject were abandoned for one which is strictly in conformity with the facts and phenomena of the Bible itself. If, for example, we assume that inspiration was not a general but a functional endowment, and consequently limited to subjects in which religion is directly involved, and that in those which stand outside it the writers of the different books in the Bible were left to the free use of their ordinary faculties, a large number of the objections which are popularly urged against Revelation from the stand-point of physical science and modern criticism would become simply nugatory.

I am aware that it has been urged that it is impossible to separate the religious element in the Bible from the various other subjects that are closely interwoven with it, and consequently that the accuracy of all must stand or fall together. So far, however, is it from being the fact that there is any real difficulty in the idea that God may have seen good to enlighten particular men on religious subjects and to leave them on others to their own unassisted powers, that it is strictly analogous to the mode in which He has communicated to us our ordinary knowledge, and therefore it affords a strong presumption that He has adopted the same course in communicating a Revelation. Thus not only has each man special mental powers which qualify him for grappling with particular subjects, and leave him on others in comparative ignorance; but the information conveyed to us by any one of our senses conveys to us no knowledge on subjects which belong to the special function of another. This is an unquestionable truth, although we are not always conscious of it in our actual experience, as, for example, in the case of vision. In the fully educated state of this faculty we judge of distance instinctively; though the power to do

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so is not any portion of our original sense of sight, but is derived from the combination of vision with the sense of touch. While in the present condition of our consciousness the two acts are undistinguishable, we know that the function of the eye itself is strictly limited to the perception of coloured objects; and that in the proper subject-matter of the other senses it leaves us destitute of information.* this respect then the idea of special functional enlightenment is analogous to the mode of the divine acting in nature; and the difficulties which it involves are precisely of the same kind as those which we experience as to the source of some of the perceptions of our senses. If therefore God has adopted the same mode of communicating supernatural and natural knowledge; and consequently, if inspiration did not confer a general enlightenment on every subject which came within the mental horizon of the inspired man, but only a functional one, we are at once freed from a host of difficulties which are at this moment grievously harassing no inconsiderable number of inquiring minds, and which form the armoury from which many of the weapons employed in the attack on Christianity are drawn.

In considering the present aspect of the controversy between Science and Revelation, it is of the highest importance that we should discern clearly what constitutes the real source of our danger. It has arisen in no small degree from theologians under the influence of particular theories of inspiration having put in claims to occupy provinces of

That the human eye only acquires the faculty of discriminating distance by means of a gradual education of the organ is proved not only by the fact that infants are apparently unable to discriminate distance until some time after birth, but also by the unquestionable fact that grown persons who have been blind from their birth and in after life obtained the use of their eyes, are at first devoid of all perception of distance, which they only gradually acquire by the aid of experience derived from the other senses. Yet in the fully educated state of the faculty the perception of distance is not only united with that of vision, but we are incapable in consciousness of separating the one from the other.